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3844524.879409
Few contributions, if any, has had a more significant impact on philosophy of language than Kripke’s (1980) ‘Naming and Necessity’ lectures. As a result of Kripke’s work, Millianism, viz. the view that names are singular terms a kin to individual constants in first-order logic, became orthodoxy. In this paper, we want to explore the idea that there is an alternative to Millianism that is not only compatible with Kripke’s seminal arguments in ‘Naming and Necessity’, but in fact strongly supported by those arguments. This alternative view is now typically referred to as Variabilism. Variabilism maintains, like Millianism, that proper names are singular terms, but rather than individual constants, the Variabilist argues that names are in fact individual variables. Throughout the years, there has been a numberVariabilist views proposed. These views share the assumption that names should be treated as variables, but they differ significantly in how these variables behave, what kind of restrictions are imposed, and what syntactic environments they can occur in. These details are obviously essential especially with respect to how similar the view is to the standard Millian view.
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3859401.879491
In this paper I propose a concept to describe the circular developmental trajectory of psychometrics of intelligence in the twentieth century, and I argue that this circularity explains the degenerate character of the field. Defining, measuring, and explaining intelligence formed a closed circuit of reciprocal refinement activities. I call this circular, internally guided, and non-progressive refinement process degenerate bootstrapping. Bootstrapping, especially in the initial stages of a science, is inevitable and might end up with better measuring instruments and a better theoretical foundation. In the psychometric intelligence case, the absence of truly test-independent benchmarks, over-reliance on test score correlations, and the absence of genuine theorizing prevented the field from making significant conceptual progress. The circularity is specific to psychometric intelligence research and the diagnosis of degenerate bootstrapping does not apply to neighboring fields and approaches. To describe the bootstrapping process, I will offer a conceptual history, starting with Alfred Binet and focusing on the work of American founders, namely, Lewis M.
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3859424.879512
The interpretation of quantum measurements remains contested between collapse-based frameworks like the Copenhagen Interpretation and no-collapse approaches like the Many- Worlds Interpretation (MWI). We propose the Branched Hilbert Subspace Interpretation (BHSI) as a minimalist alternative that preserves unitarity while avoiding both wavefunction collapse and ontological excess. BHSI models measurement as the unitary branching of a system's local Hilbert space into decoherent subspaces, formalized through causal state updates using branching and disengaging operators. Unlike MWI, BHSI avoids parallel worlds by maintaining a single-world ontology in which branching is confined to observable subspaces; unlike Copenhagen, it eliminates collapse while recovering the Born rule through branch weights. Through physically meaningful subspace records, the framework resolves quantum paradoxes such as particle-wave duality, Wigner and his friend, black hole radiation, etc. It remains consistent with interference patterns, entanglement correlations, and information preservation. By comparing BHSI with QBism, Relational Quantum Mechanics, and modal interpretations, as well as analyzing quantum teleportation (where locally decoherent Hilbert subspaces are observed), we demonstrate its advantages as a causally sound and empirically grounded approach that reconciles unitary evolution with definite measurement outcomes without metaphysical proliferation.
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3859449.879529
Many instances of scientific progress feature the development of theories that are not fully true, but merely approximately true to various extents. Since only fully true propositions can be known, this seems to rule out the view that scientific progress consists in the accumulation of knowledge. According to Bird’s Cumulative Knowledge Account of progress, however, what becomes known in such instances is a (fully true) proposition expressing that the theory in question is approximately true to some extent. We present a general challenge for this idea–the Epistemic Mismatch Problem–and consider various strategies by which proponents of the Cumulative Knowledge Account might respond to it. We suggest, however, that the only plausible such strategies involve giving up on aspects of the Cumulative Knowledge Account that are central to why it has seemed plausible to begin with.
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3859475.879549
This paper examines Free Creations of the Human Mind: The Worlds of Albert Einstein by Diana Kormos Buchwald and Michael D. Gordin. The authors seek to dispel the long-standing myths of Einstein as the ”lone genius” of Bern and the ”stubborn sage” of Princeton, drawing on newly uncovered archival materials to illuminate his intellectual networks and collaborative engagements. By exploring the authors’ reasoning, this paper engages with their interpretations, highlighting the strengths of their archival revelations and areas where alternative perspectives may enrich the understanding of Einstein’s intellectual development.
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3863607.879566
My wife’s book, The View from Everywhere, is now officially available! I’d say it’s a must-read for two (admittedly rather niche) audiences:
Anyone specifically interested in Berkeleyan idealism (and related views).1
Anyone generally interested in ambitious metaphysics, or curious to read analytic philosophy addressing “Big Questions” (rather than the usual semantic quibbles about whether tacos qualify as a kind of sandwich). …
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3903795.87958
This paper explores the relationship between social and individual phenomena, advocating for a form of analytical individualism that incorporates both ontological and explanatory holism. The first part of the paper addresses foundational ontological questions, arguing for the reduction of social facts to individual behaviors without equating them in identity. In the second part, the discussion focuses on collective intentionality, particularly through a critical examination of John Searle’s account. I argue that while collective intentionality offers useful insights into the nature of social institutions, it faces principled limitations when applied to broader social phenomena. The paper ultimately supports a non-identifying reductive individualism, which recognizes the social as grounded in individual actions while avoiding simplistic reductions. This approach, I contend, provides a more coherent framework for understanding the complex interaction between individual and social processes, as well as the ontological status of social facts. Keywords: analytical individualism, collective intentionality, ontology, reductionism, social facts, social ontology.
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3909154.879597
The neurodiversity movement grew out of the autism community but is now being applied to many neurological types, from dyslexia to schizophrenia. The resulting neurodiversity paradigm maintains that these neurological differences are normal variations in the human species, like race and sexual orientation, which should be valued and accommodated, not “fixed” or eliminated. Yet some clear-eyed individuals view their brain differences as deficits and would continue to seek treatment in the absence of discrimination or lack of accommodation. I argue that fully appreciating cognitive diversity requires more nuanced normative claims that respect individual differences and fluid circumstances. Although analogies to minority statuses can be useful, variations in personality traits provide a more flexible and inclusive model for neurodivergence. Despite ultimately rejecting the biodiversity metaphor, a more nuanced neurodiversity paradigm emphasizing our shared humanity can promote compassion, respect, and support for all.
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3917131.879611
This essay functions as the introduction to a two-part special issue on Walter Veit’s recent monograph A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness (Routledge, 2023). Veit introduces the purpose of this special issue and offers a summary of the first batch of commentaries.
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3917151.879626
There is a growing concern for the welfare of farmed insects, due to recognition of their probable sentience and their increasing use. Ensuring good welfare requires implementing best practice in welfare assessment and in developing evidence-based welfare guidelines for housing and husbandry. This case study on black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens) examines some potential methods for both, highlighting current knowledge gaps and the most urgent research priorities for insect welfare.
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3917170.87964
In this paper we argue that because photons experience change, such as coming into and going out of existence and interacting with other particles, that photons must experience time...we then calculate how much time photons experience. We start with a discussion of the philosophical position advocated by Aristotle and most philosophers: in the absence of time, no change, no interaction, no “becoming” is possible for an entity. We then review the laws of special relativity, first reviewing the conventional laws of relativity if both space and time are continuous, and then show how the laws change if both space and time are discretized (atomized, granular...). We show that if space and time are discretized, then the Lorentz factor describing length contraction and time dilation no longer diverge to infinity as the velocity of a system approaches and reaches the speed of light. In doing so, we derive equations that provide the finite Lorentz factors and time durations experienced by light-speed particles. We then discuss how these results significantly strengthen the case that space and time are discretized.
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3917193.879656
The functioning of complex natural structures, such as living systems, has eluded a generally accepted theoretical basis and empirical verification for decades, partly because of a lack of meaningful experiments. We therefore propose a class of experiments designed to test whether hitherto unknown principles of order are at work in sufficiently complex natural dynamical systems that cannot be captured by known physical laws. The underlying working hypothesis, which has already been formulated in various forms by several authors, is that the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle leaves room for ordering phenomena in the sense of a strong emergence principle in chaotic or nearly chaotic physical systems, which would not be expected if they were treated according to conventional modelling approaches. The key idea behind testing this undoubtedly bold hypothesis is to compare two sufficiently complex, virtually identical setups, one of which is operating with deterministic pseudo-random number generators placed at certain key points that are sensitive to small changes, while the other is equipped with quantum-based physical random-number generators, the two setups being otherwise identical. Existing neural networks are proposed as suitable test objects for this purpose, and the overall performance under identical training conditions could be used as a quantitative benchmark. As the working hypothesis used goes far beyond artificial networks, a successful outcome of such an experiment could have strong implications in many other branches of science.
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3917214.879672
This paper aims to develop a novel account of how scientific models of complex systems can provide us with knowledge, drawing on insights from climate modelling. We begin by critically examining the prevalent representation-based views of models, which struggle to account for the common practice of using contradictory models and model hierarchies. We then argue that scientific models (especially those of complex systems) are better understood as structures that do not need to represent the target system to be epistemically useful. Instead, their usefulness lies in the fact that they are part of an iterative process of knowledge improvement and restructuring.
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3917236.879688
What is the rational response to a scientific disagreement? Many epistemologists argue that disagreement with an epistemic peer should generally lead to conciliation by lowering confidence in the disputed belief or even suspending judgment altogether. Although this conciliatory approach is widely regarded as a norm of individual rationality, its value in the context of collective scientific inquiry is less clear. Some have even raised concerns that conciliating in scientific disagreements may slow progress or reduce the efficiency of inquiry. In this paper, we introduce a novel agent-based model that captures key aspects of scientific disagreement by incorporating both epistemic norms, which govern belief revision, and zetetic norms, which guide how scientists pursue inquiry. Our results indicate that the effects of conciliating in the face of disagreement—whether detrimental or beneficial—depend on the zetetic norms that scientists follow. When they focus on exploiting the hypothesis that they believe is most likely to succeed, remaining steadfast is more effective. However, with exploratory scientists, conciliation does not negatively affect group performance. These findings highlight the critical role of zetetic norms in determining the rational response to disagreement in scientific practice.
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3967866.879702
(This is the originally submitted version of the paper, a significantly revised version of which is forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Please cite the final version!) Abstract. According to an influential line of argument, our beliefs about which material objects exist were influenced by selective pressures that are insensitive to the true ontology of material objects, and are therefore debunked (Merricks 2001, Korman 2014, 2015, Rose and Schaffer 2017). Extant responses to this line of reasoning presuppose controversial philosophical theses, such as anti-realism about material objects, theism, or a special faculty of apprehension. The present paper develops a novel strategy for responding to debunking arguments against belief in ordinary objects, which I call “semideflationism”: our beliefs about which material objects exist are the consequents of conditional statements that we are a priori entitled to believe and whose antecedents we have empirical justification to believe. Semi-deflationism offers an attractive epistemology of material objects that. It also shares certain similarities with Amie Thomasson’s (2007, 2014) analytic deflationism, but it is immune to several difficulties with it. Most importantly, semi-deflationism doesn’t imply that seemingly difficult debates about the ontology of material objects can be trivially settled, and it leaves open the possibility that although our beliefs about which objects exist are rational, they are ultimately undermined by substantive arguments for revisionary views.
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3969016.879718
It is overwhelmingly plausible that part of what gives individuals their particular legal or institutional statuses is the fact that there are general laws or other policies in place that specify the conditions under which something is to have those statuses. For instance, particular acts are illegal partly in virtue of the existence and content of applicable law. But problems for this apparently plausible view have recently come to light. The problems afflict both attempts to ground legal statuses in general laws and an analogous view concerning the role of general moral principles in grounding moral statuses. Here I argue that these problems can be solved. The solution in the legal case is to recognize an element of self-reference in the law’s specification of what gives things their legal statuses. The relevant kind of self-reference is a familiar part of the legal and procedural world. It is immanent in at least some familiar legal or broadly conventional, procedural practices. The lessons of this discussion of legal statuses can then be applied to the meta-ethical debate over moral statuses, yielding a view on which moral principles also incorporate an element of self-reference.
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3972407.879731
We have beliefs about what is good or bad, about what reasons we have, about what we should do. These normative beliefs are connected to desire and motivation. To a rough approximation, most people desire what they believe is good, and not what they believe is bad; they are motivated to make the world better, not worse. This connection seems to contradict Humean ideas about the inertness of belief. David Lewis [1988; Lewis 1996] argued that it even clashes with elementary principles of decision theory. I’m going to explain how we can amend decision theory to make room for the connection between normative belief and desire. To do so, we need to focus on a form of desire that is often overlooked: intrinsic desire. Intrinsic desire can be linked to beliefs about intrinsic goodness. This not only avoids Lewis’s arguments, it also diffuses the threat of “fetishism”, raised in [Smith 1994]: it explains why an agent who cares about normative matters needn’t have a single intrinsic desire, to bring about what is good.
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4005016.879744
Abortion is the intentional termination of a pregnancy, either via
surgery or via the taking of medication. Ordinary people disagree
about abortion: many people think abortion is deeply morally wrong,
while many others think abortion is morally permissible. Philosophy
has much to contribute to this discussion, by distinguishing and
clarifying different arguments against abortion, distinguishing and
clarifying different responses to those arguments, offering novel
arguments against abortion, offering novel defenses of abortion, and
offering novel views about the relevant issues at stake. This entry’s central question is: is abortion morally wrong?
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4012580.879757
The article offers a novel reconstruction of Hilbert’s early metatheory of formal axiomatics. His foundational work from the turn of the last century is often regarded as a central contribution to a “model-theoretic” viewpoint in modern logic and mathematics. The article will re-assess Hilbert’s role in the development of model theory by focusing on two aspects of his contributions to the axiomatic foundations of geometry and analysis. First, we examine Hilbert’s conception of mathematical theories and their interpretations; in particular, we argue that his early semantic views can be understood in terms of a notion of translational isomorphism between models of an axiomatic theory. Second, we offer a logical reconstruction of his consistency and independence results in geometry in terms of the notion of interpretability between theories.
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4024855.879771
As anyone who has talked with a language-learner knows, syntactically incorrect sentences often succeed in expressing a proposition. This is true even in the case of formal languages. Formal semantics, say of the Tarski sort, has difficulties with syntactically incorrect sentences. …
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4032529.879785
The notion of shape space was introduced in the second half of the 20th Century as a useful analytical tool for tackling problems related to the intrinsic spatial configuration of material systems. In recent years, the geometrical properties of shape spaces have been investigated and exploited to construct a totally relational description of physics (classical, relativistic, and quantum). The main aim of this relational framework—originally championed by Julian Barbour and Bruno Bertotti—is to cast the dynamical description of material systems in dimensionless and scale-invariant terms only. As such, the Barbour-Bertotti approach to dynamics represents the technical implementation of the famous Leibnizian arguments against the reality of space and time as genuine substances. The question then arises about the status of shape space itself in this picture: Is it an actual physical space in which the fundamental relational dynamics unfolds, or is it just a useful mathematical construction? The present paper argues for the latter answer and, in doing so, explores the possibility that shape space is a peculiar case of a conceptual space.
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4032570.8798
The paper revisits Janssen’s seminal proposal of Common Origin Inferences (COIs), a powerful and scientifically fruitful inference pattern that (causally) traces striking coincidences back to a common origin. According to Janssen, COIs are a decisive engine for rational theory change across disciplines and eras. After a careful reconstruction of Janssen’s central tenets, we critically assess them, highlighting three key shortcomings: its strong realist and ontological commitments, its restriction to (or strong penchant for) causal/ontic explanations, and its intended employment for conferring evidential-epistemic status. To remedy these shortcomings, we moot a natural generalisation and amelioration of Janssen’s original conception—COI*s: Constraint-Omnivorous Inferences. COI*s warrant inference to pursuit-worthy hypotheses: it’s rational to further study, work on, elaborate/refine or test hypotheses that account for multiple constraints in one fell swoop. As a demonstration of the utility of COI*- reasoning, we finally show how it sheds light on, and dovetails, the three most significant breakthroughs in recent cosmology: the Dark Matter hypothesis, the Dark Energy postulate, and the theory of cosmic inflation.
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4032594.879814
This paper outlines an approach to analysing minimal cognition that brings out its social and historical dimensions. It proposes a model, the coordinated systems approach (CSA), which understands cognition as a coordinated coalition of loosely autonomous processes responsible for goal-directedness in a system. On this view, even individual cognition has something of a social flavour to it. The central concept of the paper is stigmergy: a process where the material trace of actions of system elements in their environment is a sign that coordinates a group of semi-autonomous processes in future actions – this is the social dimension. The historical dimension refers to longer term processes which establish the coordinative power of the sign and endow it with normative force. According to this proposal, a full explanation of cognitive capabilities should reference both dimensions. In the second half of the paper the CSA is let loose on some puzzles in 4E cognition. Can the model deal with old problems such as that of cognitive bloat, or new problems such as the supposed external memory of the slime mould Physarum polycephalum? Potentially, the approach could be used to analyse minimal cognitive phenomena over a range of scales from bacteria to human beings.
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4032639.879828
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a topic of major interest to philosophers of science. Among the issues commonly discussed is AI’s opacity. To remedy opacity, scientists have provided methods commonly subsumed under the label ‘eXplaibable Artificial Intelligence’ (XAI) that aim to make AI and its outputs ‘interpretable’ and ‘explainable’. However, there is little interaction between developments in XAI and philosophical debates on scientific explanation. We here improve on this situation and argue for a descriptive and a normative thesis: (i) When suitably embedded into scientific research processes, XAI methods’ outputs can facilitate genuine scientific understanding. (ii) In order for XAI outputs to fulfill this function, they should be made testable. We will support our theses by building on recent and long-standing ideas from philosophy of science, by comparing them to a recent framework from the XAI community, and by showcasing their applicability to case studies from the life sciences.
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4032662.879841
This paper challenges a false dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity in understanding the nature of human social relationships. I argue that social relationships are composed of both subjective and objective components, which are inherently interdependent. They are influenced by biological properties and subject to evolutionary processes, yet they cannot be reduced to them. I use emerging research on kinship as an example that showcases the appeal of this integrated approach. This paper takes a step in the direction of a unified account of sociality, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of human social behavior.
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4064312.879855
The debate over whether cognitive science is committed to the existence of neural representations is usually taken to hinge on the status of representations as theoretical posits: it depends on whether or not our best-supported scientific theories commit us to the existence of representations. Thomson and Piccinini (2018) and Nanay (2022) seek to reframe this debate to focus more on scientific experimentation than on scientific theorizing. They appeal to arguments from observation and manipulation to propose that experimental cognitive neuroscience gives us non-theoretical reasons to be ontologically committed to representations. In this paper, I challenge their claims about observation and manipulation, and I argue that the question of whether we are ontologically committed to representations is still best understood as a question about the level of support we have for our representation-positing scientific theories.
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4064335.879876
Clark (2006) proposes that a standard challenge to the hypothesis of extended cognition can be avoided in the case of linguistically structured cognition, because the role played by our public manipulation of linguistic artifacts is irreducible to the role played by the brain’s operations over internal representations. I demonstrate that Clark’s argument relies on a view of the brain’s cognitive architecture to which he no longer subscribes. I argue that on Clark’s later view of the brain as engaged in ‘predictive processing’, his earlier defense of extended cognition from this challenge is no longer an eJective strategy. I explore the implications of this for Clark’s attempts to reconcile his previous arguments for extended cognition with his characterization of the predictive-processing brain.
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4089928.879896
On Wednesday May 14, 2025 I’ll be giving a talk at 2 pm Pacific Time, or 10 pm UK time. The talk is for physics students at the Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, organized by Artur Renato Baptista Boyago. …
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4090320.879911
The cognitive sciences, especially at the intersections with computer science, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience, propose ‘reverse engineering’ the mind or brain as a viable methodology. We show three important issues with this stance: 1) Reverse engineering proper is not a single method and follows a different path when uncovering an engineered substance versus a computer. 2) These two forms of reverse engineering are incompatible. We cannot safely reason from attempts to reverse engineer a substance to attempts to reverse engineer a computational system, and vice versa. Such flawed reasoning rears its head, for instance, when neurocognitive scientists reason about what artificial neural networks and brains have in common using correlations or structural similarity. 3) While neither type of reverse engineering can make sense of non-engineered entities, both are applied in incompatible and mix-and-matched ways in cognitive scientists’ thinking about computational models of cognition. This results in treating mind as a substance; a methodological manoeuvre that is, in fact, incompatible with computationalism. We formalise how neurocognitive scientists reason (metatheoretical calculus) and show how this leads to serious errors. Finally, we discuss what this means for those who ascribe to computationalism, and those who do not.
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4090341.879924
In recent work, Nina Emery has defended the view that, in the context of naturalistic metaphysics, one should maintain the same epistemic attitude towards science and metaphysics. That is, naturalists who are scientific realists ought to be realists about metaphysics as well; and naturalists who are antirealists about science should also be antirealists about metaphysics. We call this the ‘parity thesis’. This paper suggests that the parity thesis is widely, albeit often implicitly, accepted among naturalistically inclined philosophers, and essentially for reasons similar to Emery’s. Then, reasons are provided for resisting Emery’s specific inference from scientific realism to realism about metaphysics. The resulting picture is a more nuanced view of the relationship between science and metaphysics within the naturalistic setting than the one which is currently most popular. Keywords: meta-metaphysics; metaphysics and science; naturalistic metaphysics; realism and antirealism.